Famous Reviews eBook

WILLIAM JOHN FOX

The dedicatory inscription in the volume of The
Monthly Repository, in which the following review
appears, will indicate—­in a few words—­the
motives inspiring the editor, W. J. Fox, in his journalistic
career:—­ “To the Working People of
Great Britain and Ireland; who, whether they produce
the means of physical support and enjoyment, or aid
the progress of moral, political, and social reform
and improvement, are fellow-labourers for the well-being
of the entire community.”

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Pauline was published, when Browning was 21,
at his aunt’s expense. It secured only
one favourable notice, here printed; while the
author and his sister deliberately destroyed the unsold
copies.

W. J. FOX ON BROWNING

[From The Monthly Repository, 1833]

Pauline; A Fragment of a Confession. London,
Saunders & Otley. 1833

The most deeply interesting adventures, the wildest
vicissitudes, the most daring explorations, the mightiest
magic, the fiercest conflicts, the brightest triumphs,
and the most affecting catastrophes, are those of
the spiritual world....

The knowledge of mind is the first of sciences; the
records of its formation and workings are the most
important of histories; and it is eminently a subject
for poetical exhibition. The annals of a poet’s
mind are poetry. Nor has there ever been a genuine
bard, who was not himself more poetical than any of
his productions. They are emanations of his essence.
He himself is, or has been, all that he truly and touchingly,
i.e., poetically, describes. Wordsworth,
indeed, never carried a pedlar’s pack, nor did
Byron ever command a pirate ship, or Coleridge shoot
an albatross; but there were times and moods in which
their thoughts intently realised, and identified themselves
with the reflective wanderer, the impetuous Corsair,
and the ancient mariner. They felt their
feelings, thought their thoughts, burned with
their passions, dreamed their dreams,
and lived their lives, or died their deaths.
In relation to his creations, the poet is the omnific
spirit in whom they have their being. All their
vitality must exist in his life. He only, in
them, displays to us fragments of himself. The
poem, in which a great poet should reveal the whole
of himself to mankind would be a study, a delight,
and a power, for which there is yet no parallel; and
around which the noblest creations of the noblest
writers would range themselves as subsidiary luminaries.